At seven Ilse went home, and Ingeborg prepared a supper so much like breakfast that nobody could have told it was evening and not morning except that the ray of sunshine fell through the honey from the west instead of the east, and there was cheese. At this meal Herr Dremmel, full of his fertilizers, was mostly in a profound abstraction. He drank the coffee with which he was becoming saturated and ate great slices of bread and cheese in an impenetrable silence. Ingeborg sat throwing crumbs to the birds and watching the sky at the edge of the world grow first a mighty red, then fade, then light up into clear green; and long after the shadows beneath the lime-trees were black and the stars and the bats were out and the frogs down in the reeds of the lake and the occasional creaking of the village pump were all that one could hear outside the immense stillness, they would go on sitting there, Herr Dremmel silently smoking, Ingeborg silently making plans. Sometimes she would get up and cross over to him and bend her face down close to his and try in the dark to explore his eyes with hers. "The _noise_ you make!" she would say, brushing a kiss, so much used does marriage make one to what once has seemed impossible, across the top of his hair; and he would wake up and smile and pat her shoulder and tell her she was a good little wife. Then she felt proud. It was just what she wanted to be--a good little wife. She wanted to give satisfaction, to be as helpful to him as she had been to her father in the days before her disgrace; and more helpful, for he was so much kinder, he was so dear. For this extraordinary happiness, for this delicious safety from disapproval, for these free, fearless, wonderful days, she would give in return all she had, all she was, all she could teach herself and train herself to be. Nearly always Herr Dremmel went back to his laboratory about ten and worked till after midnight; and she would lie awake in the funny bare bedroom across the passage as long as she could so as not to miss too much of life by being asleep, smelling with the delight delicate sweet smells gave her the various fragrances of the resting garden. And the stars blinked in through the open window, and she could see the faint whiteness of a bush of guelder roses against the curtain of the brooding night. When Herr Dremmel came in he shut the window.